Priceless treasure guide disguised as the confused ramblings of a misanthropic iconoclast. Seeking the next level is not a quest for the timid, not for the easily discouraged.

18 March 2011

Recent Study Relating IQ/Human /Capital to per capita GDP

Update: Here is a handy per capita GDP Predictor, which provides a 0.97 r correlation (!) between its predictions and the actual GDP numbers, using national IQ and an economic freedom metric (plus "tweaks") as input. (via Brian Wang) Methodology is provided at the link.

Wikipedia

Heiner Rindermann, of the Chemnitz University of Technology, has a study being published in the upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The study looks at 90 countries, correlating the intelligence of the populations with the per capita GDP -- in an attempt to understand the relationship of human capital to national economic well-being.

The researchers collected information on 90 countries, including far-off lands from the U.S. to New Zealand and Colombia to Kazakhstan. They also collected data on the country’s excellence in science and technology—the number of patents granted per person and how many Nobel Prizes the country’s people had won in science, for example.

They found that intelligence made a difference in gross domestic product. For each one-point increase in a country’s average IQ, the per capita GDP was $229 higher. It made an even bigger difference if the smartest 5 percent of the population got smarter; for every additional IQ point in that group, a country’s per capita GDP was $468 higher.

.... “In other words, it’s the ability of a person to solve a problem in the most efficient way—not with violence, but by thinking,” Rindermann says. He wrote the new study with James Thompson of University College London. _PsychologicalScience_via_NextBigFuture

Many factors are involved in the determination of national prosperity, including economic freedom, rule of law, property rights, and trust. But study after study appear to indicate that cognitive ability is as important as the other factors. In fact, certain minimum levels of average cognitive ability may be necessary for some of the other important factors to be reliably present.
Here is more on that topic by Rindermann in an abstract taken from an earlier (2007) study:

. It is shown that in the second half of the 20th century, education and intelligence had a strong positive impact on democracy, rule of law and political liberty independent from wealth (GDP) and chosen country sample. One possible mediator of these relationships is the attainment of higher stages of moral judgment fostered by cognitive ability, which is necessary for the function of democratic rules in society. The other mediators for citizens as well as for leaders could be the increased competence and willingness to process and seek information necessary for political decisions due to greater cognitive ability. There are also weaker and less stable reverse effects of the rule of law and political freedom on cognitive ability. _ScienceDirect

It is crucial for the future of humanity that the genetic fraction of the underpinnings of differences in average population intelligence (see map) not be denied or downgraded. Any attempts to explain all or most of the differences in population average IQ by nutritional, educational, or other environmental factors without including the genetic component, is counter-productive for future generations. Nutrition, education, and environmental intellectual enrichment of all kinds are all important -- but not sufficient for the goals of any philanthropic humanist worth the description.

The best hope for long-term improvement in average human intelligence exists within a broadly applied, advanced genetics. Such a program is likely to result in smaller IQ and EF gaps between populations -- proportionally -- than at present. The only thing to be achieved by following a politically correct path of HBD denial, is the continued and inexorable descent into a dysgenic Idiocracy.

"Great gods have little gods upon their backs to bite 'em,And little gods have lesser gods, and so ad infinitum.And the great gods themselves, in turn, have greater gods to go on,While these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on."